Who are “the People” in India?

Today,  the word people is widely used not only by the ruling bourgeoisie ideologue but also  by progressive writers, revolutionary intellectuals and various communist parties in India. 

But what does it mean by the word "people" and "peoples' democratic dictatorship"? 

In 1905, Lenin says: "It now remains to define more precisely what Marx really  meant by 'democratic bourgeoisie' (demokratische Burgerschaft), which together with the workers,  he called the people, in contradistinction to the big  bourgeoisie. .  There is no doubt that the  chief components of the 'people,' whom Marx in 1848 contrasted with the resisting reactionaries and  the  treacherous bourgeoisie, are the  proletariat and peasantry.  Lenin on Two Tactics of Democratic Revolution. Page 134 & 136  Lenin C.W. Vol 9 

Regarding the "liberal bourgeoisie," Lenin excludes them from the ranks of the "people" after the revolution, as they will betray the peasants by taking the side of the landlords.

In 1917, Lenin points out that in a letter to Dr. Kugelmann (12 April 1871), Marx spoke of a "people's revolution"  He then says that , "the idea of a people's' revolution seems estrange on Marx's  lips , and the  Russian  Plekhanovites and Meneheviks...might possibly declare such an expression a slip of the   tongue'. ..but in t h e Europe of 1871, th e proletariat on t h e Continent did not constitute the majority of the people. A "people's" revolution, one actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then constituted the "people".   Lenin State and Revolution  

After the-revolution, when the new transitional state is established, it can be, says Marx, only a dictatorship of  the Proletariat. 

"In other words: when the democratic bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie ascends another step, when not only the revolution but the complete victory of the revolution becomes an accomplished fact, we shall "substitute" (perhaps amid the horrified cries of new, future, Martynovs) for the slogan of the democratic dictatorship, the slogan of a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., of a complete socialist revolution."  Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution Lenin 

In his Two Tactics of Social Democracv in the Democratic Revolution Lenin savs: "The task now is to define which classes must build the new superstructure. This definition  is given in the slogan: The democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. This slogan defines...the character of the new superstructure (a democratic"  as distinct from a socialist dictatorship),... as bourgeois-democratic development was still  the  order of the day in Russia. 

Thus in his Why Can China's.Red Political Power Exist? of October 1928, Mao speaks of an armed  workers  and peasants"' regime , and in A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire of January 1930, he speaks of  the  correctness of the man about a workers' and peasants democratic political power. 

Stalin also  applies this concept of people  in 1926 on China: 

"I think that  the future revolutionary government in China will in general resemble in character the government we used to talk about in our country in 1905, that  is, something in the nature of a democratic dictatorship  of the proletariat and peasantry,  with the difference, however,  that it  will be  first and foremost an anti-imperialist government. This shall  be an interim state. power for China to attain non-capitalist  development. 

This idea of workers and peasants' political power i.e. people's political power,  originally Lenin's, was not only used by Mao in October 1928 and January 1930, but also appears in the 1931 constitution of the Chinese Soviet Republic. That constitution referred to the political power of  "the state of the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.

But in the late 1930s, Mao  began to depart from the traditional Marxist Leninist concept of people by bringing yet another class-the "national bourgeoisie-into the concept of people. 

 In the article "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship"  (July 1949), Mao says :  

"All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.

Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie."

Thus the word people has a different meaning in Marx, Lenin and Stalin's writings from that of Mao's writings.  For the first time Mao included national bourgeois also in the concept of people. 

Also  peoples democratic dictatorship was different from what Marx says  in his Critique of the Gotha Program of 1875  "Between capitalist  and Communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one in to the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition  period, in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

We need to define who are "the people"  in India? From the Marxist-Leninist stand point, people does not include national bourgeoisie where as from the Maoist stand point  people does include national bourgeoisie.